Sahoo enters quarterfinals of NECC-ITF Women's Tennis

Pune, Nov 12 (UNI) Qualifier Shalini Sahoo kept the Indian hopes alive as she knocked out Uzbekistan wildcard entrant Alexendra Kolesnichenko in straight sets to move into the quarter finals of the 25,000 dollar NECC- ITF women's tennis Championships here today.

Delhi based Shalini Sahoo outplayed Kolesnichenko 6-3, 6-2 in a 75 minutes encounter.

Shalini broke the Uzbeki junior in the 8th game to wrap the first set 6-3, in the second set she hit an array of winners and broke Alexandra in the third and fifth games and establish her control over the match.

Top seed Melanie South (Britain) played attacking tennis to putout Ankita Bhambri 6-2, 7-5 in 79 minutes, while Jing Jing Lu ended the challenge of other Indian Isha Lakhani 6-3, 7-5 to make it to the last eight.

Second ranked Ye-Ra Lee of Korea also moved into the quarter finals with a 7-5, 6-4 win over Thialnd's Suchanan Viratprasert.

Fourth seeded Ksenia Palkina was the only seeded player to go through a harrowing time before overcoming Leonie Mekel of Netherlands 6-1, 3-6, 6-1.

Serbian qualifier Bojana Jovanosvski, sixth seeded Kai-Chen Chang (Taipei) along with her country mate I-Hsuan Hwang also made it to the last eight.

The Indian challenge also ended in the doubles as the teams of Rushmi Chakravarthy /Ankita Bhambri and Parija Maloo and Poojashree Venkatesha were ousted in the quarterfinals.

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